This invention relates to a method of controlling a liquid metal flow and an apparatus for realizing the method.
There are known an apparatus and a method for applying a drive force to a liquid metal flow comprising the measures that a flow path for liquid metal is located where an electric current perpendicularly intersects a magnetic field, while perpendicularly intersecting both the electric current and the magnetic field. Such an apparatus and a method are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,469,471 and "Nuclear Energy", Vol. 20, No. 1, Feb. 1981, Pages 79-90.
These publications, however, disclose no operation of applying a braking force to the liquid metal flow which passes through where the electric current perpendicularly intersects the magnetic field, and no operation of releasing the braking force, and no operation of increasing and decreasing the braking force and the driving force which has a direction opposite to that of the braking force. Further, these publications disclose no method of automatically controlling such operations in response to the temperature of the liquid metal, and no apparatus for performing this method.
The liquid metal is very often used for the fast breeder reactor: an example of such a use is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,294,958. Such a fast breeder reactor comprises a system for discharging the heat in the reactor vessel to the outside, as disclosed in Japanese patent unexmined publication No. 58-35495 (U.S. Ser. No. 295,975). However, it should be noted that this system is required not to discharge the heat in the normal operation state which is in the normal temperature condition. Thus, it is desired to control stopping and starting of the liquid metal flow, which passes through the system, in response to the temperature in the reactor vessel, i.e., the temperature of the liquid metal which receives the heat from the reactor core. This desire has not been achieved in any of the publications described above. In achieving the desire, it is further desired to use no mechanical operation in order to improve the reliability. This additional desire has also not been achieved by the above publications.